Archive for month: January, 2013

Disabling autotuning will help much on DNS lookup and network discovery. It improves the data transfer speed also over the network.

Start command prompt as administrator, and follow the commands as shown in below example.

2) Remove RDC ( Remote Differential Compression)

This feature introduced with Windows Vista to transfer data over network in compressed format. The same RDC feature continued in Windows 7 also. Since most of the old operating systems came before vista do not support this RDC feature, it slows down network data transfer in Windows 7. You can remove this RDC (Remote Differential Compression) in Windows 7 by visiting control panel and programs and features. Click on ‘Turn Windows features on or off’, as shown below.

3) Remove IPv6 from network properties.

If your internal or external networks do not require IPv6 protocol, better remove it under network connection properties. Keeping IPv6 in your computer sometimes slows down network by trying to register IPv6 addresses, or trying to get IPv6 address, or trying to resolve IPv6. Better remove it if it’s not required.

4) Clear DNS Cache

You can remove any DNS cache from computer, so next time DNS request will be solved by updated DNS server. This will avoid your computer to try broken or changed DNS records from cache. To clear DNS cache, open command prompt as administrator and type ipconfig /flushdns

If you will not be using wireless network or it’s your secondary network, I recommend you to disable wireless network in windows 7 under network connection. If it’s enabled, windows 7 computer will be trying to connect available wireless network around you, and trying to login though its network. Loading your profiles and start up programs will be slow while booting because of this.

6) Modifying Link Speed & Duplex Value in Network adapter Properties.

This step also helps sometimes when you face problem with windows 7 network slow. I can’t say which option will work better, because it depends on your physical network setup (network adapter, cable type, LAN speed and network switch). By default it is set for Auto Negotiation. But you can play around with Value options and find out which is working better for your computer and network.

I’m sure above steps will help to solve windows 7 network slow. Feel free to suggest any additional steps you did to solve windows 7 network slow, or problems you face to fix it.

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In this tutorial I am going to explain how to install and setup Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller and DNS server which can be used as centralized server to keep user information, OU, setting up group policies etc.
1) Go to Start >> Run and type “dcpromo” and press enter.
Server will now start checking if Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) binaries are installed or not; if not, then it will install it.

2) Once the AD DS binaries are installed, you will get “Active Directory Domain Services Installation Wizard”.

Here you will find a option “Use Advance Mode installation” which will show you more options (basically for advance user). You can keep the checkbox unchecked and press Next.
3) Next Windows will show some basic information about Microsoft Windows 2008 Active Directory Services. Press Next to continue.

4) Choose Deployment Configuration: This windows will allow to add the server to an existing Forest Or to Create a new Domain forest.

Select Create a new domain in a new forest and press Next.
5) Name the Forest Root Domain: Enter the name of the domain (Fully Qualified domain name) which will act as root domain for the AD DS and press Next. (you can use something like osmicro.local if you dont want to use your real domain name)

6) Set Forest Function Level: We would suggest you to read the description of every OS before selecting the option.

7) Set Domain Function Level: We would suggest you to read the description of every OS before selecting the option.

8) Additional Domain Controller Option: On this window you can select DNS service here. Also as this server is First domain controller in a forest it must have Global Catalog due to which it doesn’t allow you to enable or disable this feature. I want to set this Domain Controller Server as a DNS Server as well, so I have kept the check box beside DNS server selected. Press Next to continue.

If any DNS warning Pop-Up’s Press Yes to continue.

9) Location for Database, Log Files and SYSVOL: In this window you can set the Path for database, log and SYSVOL files. If you don’t want to change it keep them default and Press Next.

By default First name of the domain is NETBIOS name. E.g. here I have used domain osmicro.local so that NETBIOS name will be OSMICRO. So, after reboot I have to login into the server I will use “OSMICRO\Administrator” as user and the password which I have used on Step 10.

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Set the NUM LOCK state to be ON by default at logon. You can accomplish this by using a script file that runs either at startup or, in Windows, through a Group Policy. TESTED ON WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL

Start Notepad.
Copy the following code, and then paste the code into the text file:

Save the file as “numlock.vbs” (including the quotes). This properly creates the file with the .vbs extension. The icon changes from a Notepad icon to a script icon.

Running the Script from the Startup Folder

To configure the script to run locally, copy the Numlock.vbs file to the user’s Startup folder, which is normally found in the user’s profile path.

To configure the script to run for all users, copy the Numlock.vbs file to the Startup folder in the All Users profile. The default path for this folder is Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

Running the Script Through Group Policy

To configure the newly created script to run by using Group Policy, first copy the Numlock.vbs script file into the Group Policy logon script folder.

The default path for a local logon script is %SystemRoot%\System32\GroupPolicy\User Computer\Scripts\Logon.

The path for a domain logon script is %SysVolFolder%\Sysvol\Sysvol\DomainName\Scripts.

After you copy the script to the appropriate location, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type mmc, and then click OK to start Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
On the Console menu, click Add/Remove Snap-in.
Click Add, click Group Policy, and then click Add.
Click the appropriate Group Policy Object. The default selection is the local computer, but you can click Browse and select a different Group Policy Object.
Click Finish, click Close, and then click OK.
In the Group Policy Management snap-in, locate the User Configuration\Windows Settings\Scripts (Logon/Logoff) folder. (You can substitute the Computer Configuration folder for the User Configuration folder.)
Double-click the Logon script object, click Add, click Browse, and then click the Numlock.vbs script.
Click Open, and then click OK.
Click OK, and then close the Group Policy Management console.

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Do you ever plug in your wired network card while your wireless card is still enabled? Ever wonder how Windows chooses which one to use? Here’s how to see the default priority—and how to change it if you want. This also works great when you need to use mobile broadband USB but still be able to reach your LAN through ethernet.

Note: there’s almost never any reason to change this, as Windows does a good job of choosing the right connection. Still, if you want to tweak it to work differently, this is how you would do it.

How to See the Current Network Card Priority

You’ll need to open up a new command prompt window and type in the following command:

netstat -rn | more

At the top of the output you’ll see the Interface List, and the column on the left-hand side shows the metric of the interface. You’ll notice that the loopback interface has the highest priority, followed by my wired Gigabit card, and then my wireless card.

If you’re wondering what all the other cards in the list are about, I’ve got some VPN software loaded, as well as VMware Workstation, all of which create virtual adapters that show up in the list.

How to Change the Network Card Priority

To change the priority, head into Network and Sharing Center and click on the Change adapter settings link on the left-hand side—or you can quickly open the network connections list by typing ncpa.cpl into the Start Menu search box.

Now that we’re in here, choose the network card that you want to change the priority for, right-click it, and choose Properties from the menu.

Now select the Internet Protocol Version 4 item in the list, and click the Properties button.

Now click the Advanced button at the bottom of this window…. getting tired of clicking yet?

And now, finally, we’re at the place where you can make the change. Uncheck the box for Automatic Metric, and then type a number into the Interface Metric textbox. You can consult the list that we found in the command prompt earlier to know what metric to assign—you’ll probably want to assign it something higher than 1, since that’s used for the loopback adapter.

You may want to go ahead and change the priority for your other card as well, just to be sure that it is assigned the proper priority.

Note: again, there’s no reason to mess with this setting unless you are actually having a problem.

Next we need to install the operating system components. The Exchange source files contain a series of ServerManagerCmd.exe answer files in XML format that can be used to install the operating system pre-requisites for each of the server roles.

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Hi – after much searching and testing I found a macro that brings up the old ‘insert from scanner’ box that was available in previous versions of Word. This does rely on you having scanning software/driver installed.

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In some situations it is not known at profile creation time what drive letter Windows will assign to an external drive, for example, when it is plugged in. To get around this the variables SERIAL or LABEL can be used. For example, if your external drive has a serial number of ABCD-EFGH then you could set your source or destination to:

%SERIAL=ABCD-EFGH%\backup\

As an alternative the label variable can be used when the drive label is known, e.g.
%LABEL=My Drive%\backup\

When the profile is run SyncBackSE/Pro will substitute the variable with the drive letter of the drive with that serial or label, e.g.
X:\backup\

An easy way to get the serial number, or label, or a drive is to use the Alternatives button in either the New Profile wizard or in the Profile Setup window if the profile has already been created. As an alternative, to get the serial number of a drive you could go to the command prompt and type dir x: (use the appropriate drive letter). The serial number of the drive is displayed in the header of the output. Note that the SyncBackSE/Pro log file also includes the serial number of the source and destination.

Note that neither SERIAL nor LABEL include the A or B drives (typically floppy disk drives). To include those you must use the SERIALALL and LABELALL variables. See the help file for more details.

This article explains how to assign permanent drive letters to external devices.
Applies to